How has Canada Immigration changed for skilled workers in the last few years ?

In 2025, there will be a big change in how skilled workers come to Canada. There will be a much more targeted way to keep population growth in check and fill specific, urgent job openings. There is still a strong commitment to skilled economic immigration, especially through the Express Entry system. This is true even though the overall goals for permanent residents have been slightly lowered from what was expecting.

 Skilled workers choosing Express Entry requirements 
The most important change for skilled workers is that the Express Entry system is now completely based on category-based selection. All-program draws are now less important. Since the beginning of 2025, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has given priority to people who show a lot of potential to fill important job opened.

Things to keep in mind for the 2025 draws:

• French speaking candidates - The number of people who can speak French is growing quickly. In fact, one of the most recent draws included 4,500 people with scores as low as 432 on the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). Canada really wants to make Francophone communities outside of Quebec stronger, as this shows.
• Healthcare and Social Services Jobs - This is still a top priority, and draws are still being held for nurses, doctors, and other people who work in health and social services.
• Skills-Based Jobs: To meet the needs of infrastructure and building projects, a lot of people are still looking for skilled trades jobs like plumbers, electricians, and heavy-duty mechanics.
• Education Occupations: There is a lot of demand in this field, so a new category has been made just for people who work in education, like teachers and early childhood educators.
• STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) job draws, as well as transportation and farming jobs, are no longer on the list of top priorities for 2025. This means that people working in these areas will have to rely more on general draws, the Canadian Experience Class (CEC), or Provincial Nominee Programmes (PNPs).

The main goal of the strategy is to hire people who are already working in Canada through the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) or Provincial Nominations. This is because people from these groups are seen as fully integrated and ready to help.

Canada immigration and processing goals for the coming years 

Under Canada's 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan, the number of permanent residents who are allowed to come to the country will slowly go down compared to previous goals. The target number is 385 thousand by 2025 and 365 thousand by 2027. There are still a lot of people from the Economic Class, which includes skilled workers, though.

IRCC has said that Express Entry programmes like the Federal Skilled Worker Programme (FSWP) and the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) will be processed more quickly in 2025. The goal is to get rid of all applications at once and keep the average time it takes to process them at 5–6 months. It is great that the core skilled worker programmes are now putting more emphasis on efficiency. This is good news for people who are applying.